Can data predict who will win the Oscars?

The Revenant will win the Best Picture award at the Oscars, according to number-crunchers at two technology companies.

The firms, Cognizant and Clarabridge, reached their conclusion not by watching the films but by analysing the data. Taking into consideration 150 variables – from genre to review ratings – they were able to pinpoint which factors had the biggest influence.

Nirav Patel from Cognizant told the BBC: “We take the human element out and just look at the data – the algorithm doesn’t watch the films.”

So it’s all about the numbers?

Actually, no. The algorithm also considers the emotional reactions to the films by looking at some 150,000 reviews and more than 38 million star ratings.

This analysis of sentiment threw up a surprise for the team. "We found that an intense negative sentiment, such as anger, plays a big part in whether a film wins the Oscar," explained Patel. The strong emotions stirred up by The Revenant, a survival story directed by Alejandro Iñárritu and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, appear to be part of the reason for film’s place at the top of predictions.

This is interesting because it goes against traditional brand aims. Clearly, businesses hope their products will elicit a positive reaction, not a negative one. However, come Sunday night it looks like strong negative emotions might actually be a good thing.

Why does this matter?

With The Revenant the firm favourite with bookmakers and the general public, why is this data analysis approach significant?

Studios put a large amount of money behind promotional campaigns in the run up to the Oscars ceremony. According to producer and blogger Stephen Follows, the per-film spend is around $10 million. If a studio has two or more films it believes capable of winning the main prize, then this number-crunching could help tell them which horse to back.

An Oscar-winning film could earn the studio an extra $16 million on a $10 million campaign, according to Cognizant. This doesn’t include a further $7 million of non-financial gains. In a highly competitive industry, such an analysis could be a potentially lucrative advantage.

That’s not to say The Revenant is a shoe-in. As with all data analysis, there is always doubt: human nature and bias can never be discounted.

As the Reuters graphic below also shows, the power of momentum should never be ignored. We’ll just have to wait until Sunday night to see if the data is right.

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